


And The Stars, Alone

by DenebYL



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ficlet, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-18 00:19:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18975184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DenebYL/pseuds/DenebYL
Summary: Riku meets a ghost on the rooftop of his high school.Over time they bonded, and he always knew that Sora was something else entirely.But he didn't know that it would take one surprise to unravel it all.Unfortunately.





	And The Stars, Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elipsist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elipsist/gifts), [ZuzuHanyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZuzuHanyu/gifts).



> Hi please listen to Biosphere's Expectations when you're reading this because that's what I was doing while writing this and I was thinking like oh, damn, this song would be so nice for when you're reading this...  
> But otherwise if you don't want to then eh you don't have to. that kinda stuff!!
> 
> It's a bit rushed because I wanted to put this out as a gift to my wonderful friends!! So I'm genuinely sorry for the mistakes ;_; I'm so sorry that you guys have had such a terrible past few weeks and I wanted to give yall something! Sorry it ended up being angst lmao,,,,,,

“Oh, you’re awake! Welcome to my roof.”

Riku’s sight upon waking up on that particular spring afternoon was not the usually cloudy sky, nor was it the sight of a few birds flying across, migrating to wherever it was they were headed – not that he cared for it. He was sure he heard about it sometime ago in class…  
But it was rather a spiky haired brunette, whom Riku could have sworn he had never met before. He was staring so intently at Riku while sitting down next to him.

“…Your… roof?” He mumbled, still confused as to what the other boy had meant.

“Um, I guess?” The other boy laughed. “Kidding. Not that this… public property belongs to anyone… Haha...”

The brunette was mumbling soon enough, as if he was terrified of having said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

“Well,” Riku sat up, and turned to look at the other boy. “I’ve never really seen you up here, and I’ve been going here for a while now.”

“I know you. I always see you open that door, eat your lunch over there…” The other boy paused for a bit, and then turned to point at one of the benches that was across the door. “…And then you would come up here and take a nap.”

Riku gave a vacant stare, definitely unsure of how to interpret it. Because that did not sound creepy at all…

“O-Oh, sorry!” He waved both his hands in front of his chest. “Not that I was stalking you or anything, it’s just that um…”

“…You’re definitely stalking me.”

“I’m-I’m not! I swear…” He sighed. “It’s just that, um, whenever I’m going here to eat lunch you’re either already here or asleep. So I’d have my lunch, and then… leave. Yeah.”

“So…” Riku tilted his head to the side. “You’re the one who locked me up on the rooftop last Tuesday.”

Immediately, the other boy’s eyes widened and he let out a small ‘eep!’ that made it all the more obvious.

“I-It was an accident! I swear! I got to call the janitor for you, right?”

Riku stared at him for a little longer, and then nodded to himself.

“I mean, I guess you _did_ save me, huh?”

The other boy quickly let out a sigh of relief, hints of fear now leaving his face.

“Yeah! I totally did, didn’t I?”

Riku still found it a bit suspicious, considering the fact that the janitor claimed that he had a ‘feeling’ that he should come up here. He didn’t mention anything about a fellow student, not at all…

But perhaps it had simply slipped the old man’s mind. Cid was, after all, old.

“I’m Sora. I was in… Oh, wait a minute…”

He could have sworn that he was hiding something.

“I mean, am. I’m in third year. It was three… Something… I’ll check later!”

But he didn’t care for pursuing it at the time.  
“What about you?”

He shooed the thoughts away, unsure what it would have meant if he had pursued it.

In hindsight, he really should have.  
But then things wouldn’t have happened as they did.

“I’m Riku. Class 3-3.”

-

“You know, I’ve been wondering.”

Riku stopped eating his lunch for a bit, and then turned to face Sora.

“About?” He replied, turning to look at Riku though he was very obviously still enjoying his melon bread.

“You must skip class a lot if you always get to the rooftop before I do, but…” He looked up to the sky, still thinking about how to say what he’s got in his mind. “Hmm, you don’t look like an honour student to me.”

Sora turned to him, shocked at the statement, and lightly hit Riku on the shoulder.

“How rude! I _am_ an honour student, thank you very much.”

“Which subject?”

Sora immediately looked away, then scratched the back of his head.

“Umm…” He shrugged. “Recess?”

“Wow, the hardest subject in the world.” Riku responded, sarcasm evident in his voice. “You must be studying super hard at home, huh?”

Sora pouted at Riku’s reply, and puffed his cheeks.

“Hey, I don’t see you being an honour student either!”

“Eh, I mean, I really don’t care for it.”

“Huh?” Sora tilted his head to the side.

This was definitely something novel to him.

“I really don’t.” Riku repeated for further emphasis.

“Man, that’s _all_ that my friends talk about these days! How did you do in Miss Gainsborough’s class, how did you do in Miss Farron’s class…” Sora sighed. 

“Really? Miss Farron’s class?” Riku laughed.

“Oh, as if you don’t have trouble with math!” Sora stuck a tongue out. “And I’m so scared of her, too…”

“Hey, all you’ve got to do is know how to solve the question.”

“Well, of course! That’s the type of response I’d expect from you, mister honour student.” Sora sighed. “Every time she looks at my direction, I wonder if she’s planning up some super hard question designed just for me.”

“Just don’t act out in her class.”

“But it’s never me!” He sulked. “It’s always Wakka, or Zidane…”

Riku let out a chuckle, much to Sora’s dismay, who immediately glared at him.

“Sorry, sorry.” He cleared his throat. “...I mean, that’s what every problem student says.”

“Not you too…” Sora sighed.

Riku laughed at how much Sora looked so distraught, and it was quickly followed by apologies that Sora pouted at for the rest of their lunch break.

When they parted later, Riku spent his time in Literature class thinking about who Wakka or Zidane were. Sounded familiar, but he’s quite sure that they’re not in his grade…

Perhaps Sora just failed a year, and had to repeat. Not that uncommon, really.

-

“You’re not headed home, yet?” Sora’s voice echoed in the corridor, and it was unfamiliar to Riku – because they would always meet on the rooftop during lunchtime.

“Not with all that rain.” Riku, who had his elbows perched on the windowsill, lazily pointed outside the window.

The sound of torrential rain quickly filled in the silence that was between them, and Sora shrugged.

“Oh, well. Guess you’re stuck with me!” He grinned.

“Stuck with you? You’re not headed home?” Riku asked, opening the pack of gum that he had just taken out of his pocket.

“Oh, uh…” Sora shrugged. “I’m just waiting for the rain to let up too. Broke my umbrella the other day.”

“Huh.” Riku shrugged, pausing to put the gum in his mouth. “I guess being stuck with you isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Sora sulked. It’s a familiar look to Riku by now.

“It means what it means.” Riku flicked the plastic wrap that he was toying with towards Sora, though it hit the bin that was just behind him.

“Hey!” Sora looked down, immediately holding his chest and stomach, trying to figure out where it had hit him, and then realised that the wrapper had gone into the bin behind him. “Oh, hey, never mind. Nice shot.”

Though a little perplexed at the fact that he wasn’t sure how it had managed to go in the bin, he dismissed it.

Riku stared at Sora’s face for a bit.

“I actually meant to hit your head, but whatever.”

“Hey!” Sora crossed his arms together and pouted, glaring at Riku, who ignored his stare and turned to look out of the window.

The rain was slowly starting to let up, and before he could announce that he was leaving, Riku took to notice the lonely look on Sora’s face.

“Actually, I have…” Riku took out more packets of gum out of his pocket. “…I wonder if I can hit your head if I shoot out four at a time.”

“Huh?!”

-

“Knock knock.”

Riku turned to his side, heeding the familiar voice that’s always been around him for about a year now.

“The stars look so pretty this time of the year, don’t they?” Sora turned to look at the sky, and then back to Riku.

“Oh, yep.” Riku nodded. “They’re definitely prettier during winter.”

“It really is a pity that the sky is hazy during summer.” Sora sighed. “But I know just why that is!”

“Really?” Riku asked, genuinely curious.

“In summer nights, we’d be facing the galaxy. The center of it, I mean.” Sora explained, glee in his voice. “What you’d be looking at then is the combined light of _billions_ of stars. All that light makes it a bit cloudy.”

“Huh, so what you’re saying is that there are less stars in winter?”

“Yep. But that’s because we’re looking away from the galaxy’s center. So, the evening sky is clearer and sharper!”

“Okay, I see.” Riku nodded in understanding. “You learned that in Mr. Scientia’s or something?”

“It’s a bit of both.” Sora grinned. “I’d always loved the stars as a kid, so I learned it on my own, and then he basically gave me a whole bunch of books on it.”

“Huh, always knew he was a nice guy.” Riku nodded.

They were quiet as they walked home, the route that they had started taking up after he learned that Sora lived in the same suburb as he did several months ago. But it wasn’t that Riku was complaining.

He liked the silence. It was comforting, and how Sora always looked impressed and in awe of the littlest things that they pass by. From that four leaf clover he found on their way back home last autumn, to the neighbour’s cat who wouldn’t stop staring at him last month…  
That one actually scared Sora more than it did amuse him, but it was funny to watch.

“So… you excited to graduate?” Sora asked, a grin on his face.

“Eh.” Riku shrugged. “After the festivities, it really is either just University or straight to work, so what’s there to it?”

“Aw, there’s always something!” Sora poked Riku’s cheek, and had a knowing look on his face. “So, which University are you going to?”

“Uhh…” Riku paused for a bit. “Nowhere.”

“Nowhere?No _way_.” Sora laughed, and proceeded to poke at Riku’s arms, knowing that this would annoy him. “I know you talked about going to University!”

“Stop, stop!” Riku sighed. “Okay, okay! …I’m… not going until next year.”

“A gap year? Bold.” Sora let out a chuckle. “But you haven’t quite answered my question!”

“I mean, I’m not going until next year, so what does it matter?” Riku shrugged.

“It absolutely does! So I’ll know when you finish classes, and then I can come see you.”

“…I’m actually going to be moving to Tokyo for University.”

In an instant, what Riku had feared happened.

“Tokyo, huh?”

He noticed how Sora’s voice mellowed as he mumbled.  
How he was now staring at his feet, how he held his stomach as if his heart had just dropped, and how he would bite at his lip as if trying to hold in what he wanted to say.

“…I’m sorry.”

He figured how Sora would react, and he dreaded this. He really did.

So Riku stopped in his tracks, and the sound of his footsteps on the snow stopped.

“W-Why are you sorry?” Sora stopped in his tracks, then turned to him with a grin on his face.

“…I mean, I don’t know.” Riku sighed. “I’m just going so far away…”

“As you should.” Sora turned to face him, and put his arms on his waist. “Go on forth, child.”

“…Child?” Riku tilted his head to the side.

“Well, go forth!” Sora posed as if he was going to fly a paper airplane. “Pursue your dreams! …Or something?”

Riku had a smile on his face. He sighed before resuming his footsteps and walked on with Sora.

Though he usually liked it whenever winter was ending, it felt really bittersweet this year.

-

“Don’t look just yet.”

“I’m not looking! For the… tenth time!” Sora exclaimed.

“Oh, didn’t know you could count ‘til ten.” Riku joked.

“One, two, three…” Sora continued counting, to prove otherwise to Riku.

He laughed at it quietly, but at some point, he wasn’t quite listening to it anymore.

“Open your eyes.”

“Man, this better be one heck of a surprise!”

Sure enough, as soon as Sora opened his eyes, it was a beautiful sight of the January night sky, flooded to the brim with bright, luminous stars.

Sora noticed that just by the horizon, it was a skyline filled with buildings, followed by a seemingly endless patch of grass and a body of water that perfectly mirrored the stars that shone above.

“Best view around here.”

Riku said, as he sat down and pat the grass beside him, gesturing for Sora to sit.

“Riku…”

“I tried the rooftop. The school rooftop. You know, just to remind us of how all this started. You stalking me and all that, but uh…” He shrugged. “ _Complications_ happened.”

Sora was still staring at him at this point, and Riku felt the need to expand more on it. Did Sora think he was lying…?

“I mean, not complications. I meant that I asked him nicely, and he said no. I thought of taking his keys, but I didn’t want to get him in trouble and all, and I–“

Riku’s speech was almost immediately interrupted by Sora who held him tightly, immediately planting his face on his shirt.

Riku could feel that Sora was crying into him, and he stopped trying to expand on the complications of having Cid Highwind as the world’s strictest janitor and reciprocated by putting his hands on Sora’s back quietly.

“Sora…”

“…You dummy.” He said, his voice muffled.

“Huh?”

Sora spoke again, though his voice was still muffled because he was still crying into his shirt.  
But when he heard it again, and again, and again, it eventually became clearer, and he felt his heart drop.

“I can’t fall in love with you.” 

“Sora?”

Sora pushed himself away from Riku, his eyes full of tears and his knees still on the grass.

“I can’t fall in love with you.”

Riku stayed still. Quiet. He wasn’t sure what to say to that, because he was as confused as he was heartbroken at the statement.

Not to mention he felt that his heart was in turmoil at the sight of a crying Sora, as if he was telling him that falling in love with him was forbidden all along.

“Not… like this.” Sora sniffled, and tried to calm himself down, but he was still looking at the grass, his fists grasping them as if they were his last ditch effort to stop the tears from piling in.

“Not like… what?”

He braved himself to ask, unsure what to expect from the response.

“I’ve been… I’ve been lying to you, Riku.” Sora mumbled quietly, his voice now filled with fear.

But Riku was wondering if he could put a stop to it, because he figured that… he knew what it was, right?

“…No, you haven’t.” Riku came closer to him, and put his hands on Sora’s. “I’m the one… Who had been lying to you.”

“…How? How have you been lying to me…?” Sora shook his head. “You’ve done no such thing…”

“I know you're dead.” Riku said, holding Sora’s shoulders this time around. “I know that. But I never wanted to ask, I never wanted to acknowledge…”

Riku took a deep breath, and weakened his hold on Sora.

“…I never wanted to acknowledge that.” He said, softly. “But I knew that you were. So if you thought that was going to stop me at all…”

Sora shook his head, and Riku noticed that more tears had fallen into the ground. But he wasn’t about to let Sora be. Not like this.

“…I made you come here tonight to show you that, even though I’m leaving for Tokyo tomorrow, I wanted you to know that… I didn’t want you to feel unheard, or alone.”

Riku leaned back, and held Sora’s hand that was still on the ground.

“I didn’t want you to feel as if you were going to be alone, forever. Now I don’t know how ghosts work, or if you can come with me to Tokyo by tagging along with me…”

That got a little bit of a chuckle out of Sora, and Riku smiled a little.

“But since we share the same sky, whatever stars you’ll be looking at, even if just a few…”

Riku paused, hoping that his message would come across to Sora loud and clear.

“…Even if just a few, know that I’ll be looking at them too.”

Just then, Sora slowly lifted his head up and Riku could swear that he saw the stars in his eyes.

“Riku, you idiot…”

Sora was still crying a little.

“I… I figured you knew that I was already dead, but that’s not what I lied to you about.”

“What do you mean…?”

Then he saw the stars in Sora’s hair, and hands.

“I… I asked to come back to the human world because I wanted to know what being in love feels like, and I… I didn’t think you would fall in love with me too, because…”

“You…?”

Riku’s hands cupped Sora’s face gently, knowing that Sora was increasingly becoming hesitant of telling him what the problem was.

Sora then held his hands, putting their hands together between the two of them.

“I… promised that I would return once I’ve felt that.”

And once again, the tears returned.

“I’m so sorry, Riku. I’m so, so sorry.”

Sora cried again, but there were no droplets.

Only stars.

Though taken aback, Riku knew he had to say something.

Just something, anything. Before the chance disappears.

Anything before the love of his life became the stars above – something to adore and yearn for, yet unreachable.

“Sora,”

He said, placing Sora’s hand on his chest, where his heart is.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He pulled Sora toward him, and held him as he disappeared into the night.

“Riku, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Sora chanted, the apology muttered right beside his ears.

“You’re okay.”

One final apology, before Riku chose to bid goodbye forever.

“I love you.”

“…I love you, too.”

And all that Riku saw for the rest of the night was the stars, and the stars alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea around for ages.
> 
> Didn't think that I'd have to learn about the milky way and the northern/southern hemisphere. Damn. It be like that.
> 
> edit: 31 May, looks like I'm working on a sequel! So if you liked this and want more, you're in luck. But it's mostly dedicated to me mates up there so uhhhhh  
> but be sure to keep an eye out if you wanted more!
> 
> edit: 10 Jun, the sequel is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19150729) if you're interested.


End file.
